Category Archives: Hillbilly Journal

The Metropolitan Opera broadcast season begins December 1st. Again this year there are seven Saturdays starting earlier than 1:00 PM. In all cases we subtract about 15 minutes from the Met starting time for WHRB’s Prelude to the Met. Fans … Continue reading →

I’ve been wondering whether I needed to explain this at all, but I did mention it on air, so if anyone is curious, this is what happened: Barbara Martin Stephens lived with Jimmy Martin from 1953 to 1966, and had … Continue reading →

Big Country Bluegrass Inertia, more than anything else, has kept Dr Janie and me from the annual Lowell Folk Festival. It’s free (well, after you pay for parking), festive, with a great variety of music and food (the music is … Continue reading →

The High 48s Bluegrass Band Back on the May 26th show I rediscovered the 2014 album of train songs, called Great Northern Railroad, from a band called The High 48s, a slim cardboard volume hiding amidst the plastic jewel boxes … Continue reading →

Last Saturday (5May) on a whim I played an instrumental version of the fiddle tune ‘Maple Sugar’ (sans fiddle) from White Mountain Bluegrass, and mentioned that the first version I recalled was from Doc Williams, “with words.” As it turns … Continue reading →

For bluegrass-country fans here in New England, Presidents’ Day weekend means Joe Val Weekend. The substitution is fine with me, as the elevation of the third weekend in February to just another Monday day off meant the nation quickly forgot … Continue reading →

And a houseful of kids, with Daughter Sarah visiting with her family (three boys) from Virginia, and Number Two Son Nathan and his crew (two boys, three girls) staying here while the house they bought in Dedham is undergoing remedial … Continue reading →

Years rush by. Memory recedes. I’ve always remembered the anniversary of that terrible day, but this year I was preoccupied with the Saturday off the week before, the spider bite, Don Williams’s and John Cooke’s deaths, Number Two Son Nathan’s … Continue reading →

We finally made it down to Virginia to visit with daughter Sarah and her family. Last December we were frustrated by our dog Ali’s problems with a corneal abrasion, requiring daily eyedrops and an ‘Elizabethan Collar’. This Tuesday Ali developed … Continue reading →

NOTE: For higher-resolution versions of the photographs, go to Flickr, HERE. (They won’t be super high, because with my Rebel T2i-Tamron 18-270 combination, I still needed to shoot at 3200 ISO, but they will be better than the ones that … Continue reading →